performing Hans Stevens' at Phoebus Gallery June 1, 2017 - June 3, 2017 between 2.30 and 3.30 pm

During the Poetry International Gallery tours on thursday, friday and saturday I will perform a text by Hans Stevens.

Phoebus Gallery shows the 365 day-A4-tjes by Hans Stevens, which capture the entire main gallery space.

In the basement is the exhibition with texts and books by Simon Benson.

During the group visits I will performing a short text by Hans Stevens' in the entrance hall.

about the performance

Hans Stevens is an almost unknown artist who died 4 years ago.

His work consists of drawings, paintings, performances, writings, lectures...

Being a performance/writing artist myself, I became especially interested in his texts.

They are important for me because they are the sediment of a fully independent thinking, autonomous: Hans never used the words poetry, philosophy or even literature for his texts.

They are a sort of language-based visual thinking about all sorts of aspects of live: especially about the concepts of imagination/creation and translation.

For the fact that they don't try to give answers, but instead keep mentioning the same things like a mantra, they for me have a strong relation with ritual or religious texts.

Although Hans Stevens never bothered about publication of his texts. I started - with his permission - reading them aloud.

Since the first meetings with his texts I try to perform them as often as I can...

My own performances deal with time and space. Some of the questions that fascinate me is: where do my works belong? For whom should I make them exist?

Thinking of the independence of Hans' texts I think they belong basically to time and space....

Therefore I decided to vocalize his texts while rotating around my center, as an approach to give them a timeless and spaceless existence.

To avoid reading from a paper I pronounce the texts along with my own recording of the text.

Because of Hans' very personal artificial Dutch language, it is not possible for me to translate them to english, still I think you could enjoy the sounds and the repetitions of the text.

The text I will perform is the first from a series called 'brieven' (letters)

Toine Horvers